


waves after midnight

by seijoh



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: (kinda), Alcohol, Angst with a Happy Ending, Black Widow AU, Drug Use, Espionage, GOD THIS IS SO HARD TO WRITE FOR MY STUCKY STANNING ASS, ITS UHHH NOT REALLY RATED M THATS JUST THE VIOLENCE AND SHIT, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Mental Health Issues, Murder, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Violence, marvel AU, o shit i forgot to add these tags
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2018-12-23 22:29:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11999244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seijoh/pseuds/seijoh
Summary: "i remember you."tooru smiles humorlessly. "no, you don't."or, an au where oikawa is the black widow and iwaizumi is the winter soldier.





	1. ACT I

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE CONTINUING  
> this work contains **heavy** violence, descriptions of injury, and mentions of alcohol/drug use. there are also characters with allusions to ptsd, trauma, and depression. if this may harm you in any way, _please_ click off now. there's nothing that you'd usually associate with M/E rated fics in this (i.e. explicit sexual content) but there _is_ a lot of the aforementioned, so please be wary of that.
> 
> there are also references to things in the comics, and i'll try to explain those in the footnotes.

******( SCENE I )**

**i burn, i freeze; i am never warm. i forgot softness because it did not serve me.**

Tooru wakes up at 5:00 every morning, the remnants of a routine still holding onto him. The even ticking of a clock had been beaten into him long ago with a terrifying precision, and it’s something he can’t quite get rid of. (He is a dancer, after all, and what good is a dancer who cannot keep the time?)

The SHIELD helicarrier is a city in and of itself, the constant whirring of machinery fading into the compressed air pumped out of vents, and it’s almost never silent. People mill about, the announcement of a new emergency hurrying their footsteps. He appreciates the noise in the way an abandoned child appreciates human contact. Nowadays, silence is a tad too stifling, like a spider’s web that he can’t quite untangle himself from, and he finds that he prefers white noise to the emptiness of quiet. Despite that, he much prefers the vitality of a real city.

Hundreds of feet below, New York City thrums with life and the living. Smog buries itself into the fabric of Tooru’s clothing. Static charges the air, and he wanders the streets almost aimlessly, looking for something that he can’t quite seem to find. He can’t decide what he likes better: the daytime—long lines of traffic, rushing in and out of buildings, sidewalks crammed with people—or the night—neon signs coming to life, the harsh glow of skyscrapers, smoke and alcohol seeping into his bones.

His apartment, small and cramped, is tucked into a little nook on the shadier side of heart of the city. Its exterior is faded brick, and the insides are slathered in a shade of eggshell white that peels off the walls. There’s a book on astrophysics lying on the coffee table, a dusty glass of water standing next to it. It’s not much—and it definitely isn’t home—but it’s all the privacy he’s got. (Besides, he’d rather die than live on the helicarrier, in another place with rigid schedules and overseers watching his every move.)

 

 

Gingerly taking the pointe shoe off, Tooru hisses slightly as the movement tears a little bit of the already lacerate flesh even more. He’d known it’d be a bad idea to throw himself into dancing so hard for so long, but the pain gives him something other than bleak numbness to feel.

The blood makes him human.

He rubs his ankle, bending it slightly to ease a bit of the bite that begins to grow. It’s not bad and will heal in about twenty minutes, but for now he’s thankful for it.

It’s slightly disorienting to remember that not all people have accelerated healing rates and an immunity to disease, but then he supposes that the inverse is equally jolting for those unlike him. (And there is no one in the world quite as fucked up as Oikawa Tooru anymore.) When he’d got shot in the liver back in ‘93, it’d been a race against time to get the bullet out before the cells and skin had grown around it.

He is a walking Frankenstein project, a corpse with a consciousness, a study in tragedies and misfortune. _The Ship of Theseus_ , he thinks, _That’s what I am. After all, if all the parts of me that are broken and wrong are simply replaced, if everything about me has been remade, am I still the same person?_

 

 

Life coming back from missions is more difficult than life away. When he’s working, Tooru knows how to act. He knows his job, and he has a set objective to complete. He has a _goal_. During an assignment, he can suppress the feelings of disgust that rise up his throat in the form of bile and ignore the guilt that settles in the bottom of his stomach like sediment in a river. But New York, sweet New York and his tiny apartment tucked in-between brick buildings in the shadiest part of the city, offers little distraction to take his mind off of the demons that hound at his heels.

Tooru can barely look at a princess doll without flinching, and classical music makes him grit his teeth. His posture is impeccable at all times, even when no one’s watching, and there’s an inherent grace to his movements that he just can’t seem to shake.

His days blur like syrup, and time seems to move too slow and too fast all at once. They say time heals all wounds, but it’s been nearly a century and Tooru is still hurting.

 

 

 

**( INTERLUDE )**

“You fail me, Watari,” Irihata says, his voice clear of all emotion and holding a gun to Watari’s forehead, “and most importantly, you fail Mother Russia.”

Watari does not beg, not even in his final moments. Oikawa could almost admire the boy for that, if not for the fact that the only reason Watari was kneeling on the polished hardwood floors was his inability to function properly. His inability to _kill_ properly. His only mistake had been the second of hesitation before slitting the horse’s throat.

“You know what this means?”

He swallows thickly. “ _Da_.”

Oikawa could have sworn he’d seen a single tear slip out of Watari’s eyes moments before Irihata pulled the trigger.

 

 

 

**( SCENE II )**

**hell is empty and all the devils are here!**

“We can’t just raid his house without a reason!” Hanamaki exclaims. “He’s a diplomat, and it’d be a little more than suspicious if we just broke in and tore his house apart without probable cause.”

“We _do_ have a reason,” Matsukawa says dryly, “He ordered the deaths of people with evidence against him. He’s a traitor to his country. His work could _literally_ start the third World War. Sounds like reason enough to me.”

“That’s not public information. We can’t use that as an excuse. No one knows he’s a Benedict Arnold but us. If we just showed up with that information, people would ask how, and we used methods that aren’t, uh, exactly _legal_ for a government agency. _Or for anyone_ ,” Hanamaki points out. “We have to be smart about this.”

Matsukawa sighs.“Ugh. Tooru, what do you think about this?”

Tooru takes a second to look at the two, _really_ look. They seem about his age—or rather, his physical age—and their eyes have the same kind of glean that a hero’s does. Shadowed and scarred, yet hopeful for better days. It’s a look Tooru has seen on self-proclaimed heroes many times before, and he’s always been around to see them crash and burn. But, he supposes, those kids had always thought themselves gods. There’s something flawed about Matsukawa and Hanamaki that makes Tooru wonder if he’s ever known anyone else quite so _human_.

But they have a job to do, and Tooru has long lost his penchant for wonder.

“Isn’t it obvious?” he says, “We’re spies. We sneak in.”

 

 

 

**( INTERLUDE )**

The soft glow of the flashlight seems so much harsher in the pitch black. Oikawa spends his nights reading, tucked away in the hidden record room that most of his peers don’t even realize exist, poring over the files. There are so many that even a month spent entirely in solitude dedicated to reading wouldn’t be enough, but Oikawa only dares to come a few times a week in the early hours of morning.

His fingers dance through the folders, touch ghosting over the name _Watari Shinji_. The guilt of deaths wears on him like an ocean eating into a cliffside. There are so many faces burned into the back of his mind, names scattered on his ledger. Deaths he’d caused, inadvertently or otherwise.

(The self-preserving side of Oikawa says that Watari’s death says that the boy’s death hadn’t been his fault, but he knows if he’d been just a little bit less methodical in that killing, a little bit less ruthless, a little bit _less_ , Watari might have seen another sunrise. After all, only the strong survived in the Red Room, and if the strong weren’t as good, the weak wouldn’t be so bad either. But the sensible side knows that logic like that is bullshit and only serves to harm more than the good it aims to do.)

A few more seconds and his gaze catches on a piece labelled _Wolf Spider Program_. Carefully, he pulls it out, shuffling it side to side to avoid making sound. When Oikawa opens the folder, there’s only a single telegram inside, typed neatly in a monospace font.

 

7 April 1956

First subject for Project SHIRATORIZAWA, codename Wolf Spider, retrieved. Testing to begin soon.

 

“Having fun?”

His head snaps up, but Oikawa forces himself to remain calm under Irihata’s piercing stare. He’s caught red-handed, and there’s not a thing he can say to justify what he’s done. The words _treason treason treason_ burn under his skin, spreading through his veins like wildfire, and he can only imagine the torture—

“Finish up here,” Irihata says, cutting off Oikawa’s thoughts, “then go to bed. You’ll have a long day tomorrow.”

A sliver of a smile ghosts over Irihata’s face, and Oikawa remembers reading about the predators that would bare their teeth before attacking. Irihata won’t take this lying down. His pride, both as a man and as the instructor of the Red Room, won’t let him. There will be a punishment somewhere along the line, but something tells Oikawa he won’t die. Not yet. Not today.

“None of your comrades would dare try something like this,” Irihata mutters, giving Oikawa a look that feels like a reassessment.

 

 

 

**( SCENE III )**

**elegance attracted me. i liked the way it hid pain.**

Tooru plucks a champagne flute off a tray, a disarming smile on his lips as he scans the room for any signs of the diplomat. The ballroom is filled with people, the familiar stench of _nouveau riche_ permeating the air. It’s one he’s never really quite gotten used to, and despite his innate grace, he feels sorely out of place in the middle of all the glamour.

 _You were raised for this_ , a voice inside of him says, dark and poisonous, dripping through his veins like an IV meant to kill. _This is your stage,_ premier _. This is all you know_.

He blinks the thoughts away, his focus shifting on the diplomat as he approaches. Tooru lets a smile grow on his face, deceptive and disarming. _This is all you know._ “Ah, _Monsieur_ , congratulations on your work!”

 

 

Tooru lets the diplomat lead him into his hotel room with the promise of a good night, words ambiguous enough to imply physical closeness or a drug-induced euphoria. He knows how these men work—they think they’re owed the world when they barely lift a finger to better it—and he’s dealt with them before too. It doesn’t take long before the ambassador is barely coherent, a blunt sticking out of his mouth and residual cocaine dusting the lapels of his suit.

It’s easy enough to find the notes and files he needs—the briefcase under the bed; under the false bottom, third folder from the last—and he slips out without a trace. The ambassador will be dead before morning anyway. The poison laced in the drugs is enough to kill a man more than half his body mass and virtually traceless. Widow’s Poison.

 

 

 

 **( INTERLUDE )**  

When he walks into the studio at sunrise, Oikawa feels as if the evidence of his crimes has been tattooed plainly across his face, but to his relief, no one acts out of the ordinary. The only difference is Irihata’s piercing stare, trained on Oikawa’s back like a target.

It feels a little bit like a sniper’s focus, aimed at tracking every rotation of his body. He wonders if he’s somehow done something _right_ in disobeying those indirect orders, the silent rope of command that had strangled the rest of his comrades into submission.

Moments before dinnertime, Irihata approaches him. “Follow me.”

Oikawa has no choice but to comply, following through empty hallways painted white with bright overheads burning down from the ceilings. It seems so sterile and cold, not unlike the untouchable beauty of the decor he’s used to, and the blandness of it all almost makes Oikawa lose his bearings. Not quite, though. After all, he is a Widow and he won’t be brought down that easily.

They walk for exactly fifteen minutes and thirteen seconds, the soft padding of Irihata’s shuffling the only sound, and about seven hundred steps from when the Instructor had first called him before the two of them arrive at two heavy steel doors. Irihata pulls one of them open, ushering Oikawa in with a glance, before securing the five locks attached to it.

“Irihata.” The man is short, almost like a child, yet old. His face is weathered and hard, and his eyes leave no room for trivialities like kindness. His eyebrows, thick and grey, are a stark contrast to the white hair swept atop his head. Hands clasped behind his back, spine straight, head held high—everything about his posture tells Oikawa that this is not a man who tolerates dissent.

Irihata nods in acknowledgement before addressing the stranger. “Washijou. Is the Wolf Spider ready?”

“ _Da._ ”

Oikawa’s eyes widen as Irihata pushes him inside of the see-through, bulletproof container in the middle of the room. “Go. Show me what you have learned during those nights, _chernyy pauk_.”

 

 

 

**( SCENE IV )**

**violence does not always take visible form, and not all wounds gush blood.**

“Do you have everything?” Hanamaki’s voice is panicked as he pulls up. The car slows enough for Tooru to make his way in but never stops moving.

Tooru throws the manila folder onto the dashboard, as he slides himself into the backseat of the getaway car, the vehicle already in motion by the time he reaches out to slam the door shut. “ _Floor it and go!_ ”

The tires squeal against the asphalt, and Matsukawa rapidly thumbs through the files, muttering notes under his breath as he counts them off. He pauses once to look up and shouts, “Fucking _drive_ , Makki! They’re shitting on our ass.”

“ _I’m going as fast as I can!_ ”

Several bullets fire through the back window, whizzing past and popping three holes in the windshield, barely missing Hanamaki’s ear. Tooru curses under his breath. He yanks out a gun and opens the window, cleanly shooting three men down before pulling his head back through.

“ _Faster!_ ” Tooru yells, fingers moving to reload the handgun as fast as he can. In a matter of seconds, he’s drawing down the other window and shooting at the men again.

“I’m trying my best,” Hanamaki replies, turning sharply. It makes the car tilt slightly, and Tooru can hear Matsukawa muttering prayers underneath his breath.

“Your best isn’t good enough,” Tooru spits bitterly, and his blood turns cold once he realizes what he’s just said. He sounds a little bit too much like an old man with greying hair, short and stocky with eyes like a hunter.

“Aight, aight, I’m going!”

Tooru can feel Matsukawa’s piercing gaze fall on him, but he’s too numb to care whether he’s become so easy to read that Issei knows something’s wrong.

 

 

 

**( INTERLUDE )**

He doesn’t expect the first swing, but Oikawa feels it coming anyway. He ducks down, the air behind the punch cool against the sweat beginning to bead on his face. His opponent is taller than he is by an estimate of one or two inches. Tan skin, olive brown hair…Oikawa catalogues it in his head for future reference. But for now, he’s focused on staying alive.

The Wolf Spider is fast, incredibly so, and it takes all that Oikawa has to avoid getting his face smashed into his skull. The Spider gets a lucky hit in and slams his fist straight into Oikawa’s stomach, and he can _feel_ something move out of place. He stumbles back, knocked out of breath, and wheezes. _Air, he needs air._ In the few seconds of time he’s bought for himself, instincts lock in place and Oikawa realizes this isn’t a test to see who will come out on top in a fight. It’s a test to see how long he’ll survive.

He dodges a particularly strong kick and dives under the Spider’s elbow for a quick jab to his ribs before quickly moving. _Keep moving. Don’t get caught._ The Spider’s punch, a killer coming in from the left, is frighteningly fast and meets his chest with a sickening crack. Oikawa can barely keep up, much less move out of the way, as he falls to the ground, the Spider angling a kick to Oikawa’s leg. His right knee is twisted at an odd angle, but he grits his teeth to ignore the pain.

_Stay alive. Stay alive. Stay alive. Stay—_

Seconds before the Spider’s leg collides with his ribs, Oikawa lashes out and yanks it out from under him. In the moments that the Spider falls, he makes his move. Oikawa makes a point to step on the Spider’s more _sensitive areas_ as he makes his way into a standing position. It’s a split second decision, and Oikawa grabs the Spider’s head in his moment of weakness before throwing him into the wall hard enough to crack it. Running over, Oikawa clambers over to him, his leg dragging limply behind him, and rams the Spider’s head into the unbreakable glass once again. Just as Oikawa pulls his head back to slam it for a last time, a voice stops him.

“ _Dostatochno_.” Washijou’s tone is cold and slightly bitter, as if the outcome were undesirable to him. _Enough._

Irihata’s voice is oddly triumphant, but all Oikawa can think of is the pounding in his head, the throbbing of his knee, and the blood trickling down his nose. “What can you say?”

Washijou is silent as his glare burns into Oikawa.

He lets out a laugh, full of mocking and spite. “Had you ever dreamed that one of my Widows could best your Wolves, Tanji?”

Irihata radiates pride. Oikawa can’t breathe.

 

 

 

**( STOP )**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **  
> **  
> __  
> [reblog this fic?](http://josais.tumblr.com/post/164980850961/waves-after-midnight-13)  
>   
>   
> 
>  
> 
> this will loosely follow the comic canon of natasha romanoff and bucky barnes’ relationship while they were together in the red room, but aaaaa it’s so hard for my stucky stanning ass. just in case you need it, here are a few explanations for the comic references i make. (i’ll be posting these at the bottom of all three chapters as a sort of index)
> 
> [ a ] in the comics, the black widows were injected with their own type of the super-soldier serum during their graduation ceremony that was similar to the one given to captain america and bucky barnes, slowing down their aging process to an almost stop and making them immune to all diseases/infections, which is why oikawa (and natasha) are able to look like they’re in their 20s while being in their late 70s - early 80s. the exact details of the graduation ceremony are never confirmed either (as far as i know at least lmao), but are rumored to include killing someone point blank.
> 
> [ b ] the line about princess dolls is a reference to the brainwashing the red room used where they would show the girls altered versions of movies that were changed to include subliminal messages to condition them
> 
> [ c ] the wolf spider program, or project shiratorizawa, is based off of marvel’s wolf spider program that was supposed to be the “brother company” of the black widows. natasha romanoff’s husband (who she later divorced lmao) also came from the wolf spider program. it was later shut down and branded as a failure. however, in this au, the wolf spiders are based off their comic counterparts and also the failed super-soldiers that preceded bucky barnes as prototypes for the winter soldier (they were all later killed for being too violent and uncontrollable).
> 
> [ d ] if you notice the difference between the arcs and the interludes, oikawa is always referred to as tooru in the main story—a reference to the black widow’s choice to refer to herself as natasha romanoff, as opposed to natalia romanova. he gets rid of the name in an attempt to dissociate himself from the red room and reconnect with the person he would have been without it.
> 
> -
> 
>  
> 
>  **quote sources **  
> **  
> **  
>   
>   
>   
>   
> act i, scene i: catherynne m. valente, _deathless_  
>  act i, scene ii: william shakespeare, "the tempest"  
> act i, scene iii: zadie smith, _swing time_  
>  act i, scene iv: haruki murakami, _1q84_


	2. ACT II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guess whos alive again? (me)

**( SCENE I )**

**all i know is a door into the dark.**

There’s something off about the atmosphere when they step into the helicarrier that makes Tooru immediately tense. The air is thick with something stifling, and everything about it screams  _ danger! trap! leave! now! _ For a place filled with hundreds of people, it’s all too quiet. It makes him antsy, and his fingers twitch, itching to grasp at his gun. Even Makki and Mattsun have noticed something off.

The central room, usually crowded and loud, teeming with agents walking from one end of the hovercraft to another, is strangely empty. All except for Mizoguchi standing in the center of the room, a single manila folder in his hands.

“What’s going on?” Tooru asks, voice calm and refusing to betray any emotion.  _ Don’t give them any clue as to how you’re feeling. Don’t give them any advantages that you don’t have a countermeasure for. _

“They know,” Mizoguchi says simply, glasses glinting from the sun streaming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows. “They don’t have a direct lead from the diplomat to SHIELD, but they have strong suspicions. I’m placing you undercover. Officially, you’re traitors in twenty-two different countries across three continents and are required to be brought to trial in the International Criminal Court if caught alive.”

“And unofficially?”

“ _ Unofficially _ , you report to me. Instructions are in this folder.”

Hanamaki pulls a strange face. “Then why are you telling us  _ here _ ? Couldn’t we be wired in here?”

Mizoguchi holds out the folder, gesturing for Matsukawa to retrieve it, and smiles wryly. As if he’d already taken that into consideration and had either done something about it or was willing to gamble with his life— _ their lives _ . “Don’t show your face here or anywhere near SHIELD until ordered to. There are orders to shoot on sight.”

 

 

 

**( INTERLUDE )**

Oikawa thinks his knee will never be the same after that beating from the Wolf Spider. It pops every so often when he stretches it, and it throbs with phantom pains. It’s set perfectly, healing in a way that makes him wonder if he’s only imagining the shooting fire up his leg, but every so often he’ll glance at the scarring around it and wonder if he would have been able to get out of that fight unscathed if he’d had a bit of the serum. Even when they give it to him when he graduates, Oikawa doubts it’ll be able to fix the mess of little white lines.

A few months later, the man comes to the Red Room. He reminds Oikawa of the Spider, gruff and sturdily built, thickly corded muscle and silence that speaks louder than anything else. But it’s the eyes in the new soldier that are different. They’re sadder, in pain, and it makes Oikawa wonder what things those eyes had seen. Why the handlers hadn’t taken the pain in those eyes and snuffed it out like they’d done with the emotions of every other Spider before him.

Oikawa steels himself for a fight, his body tensing and his eyes shifting around the room, looking for locational advantages, but to his surprise, the Spider waits.

“You will train each other,” Irihata says, “You fight, and you learn.”

Shock stills him.

Irihata smiles humorlessly, cold like the winters in St. Petersburg. “He is nothing like a Widow. There is no softness.”

 

 

 

**( SCENE II )**

**i took my power in my hand and went against the world.**

Hanamaki and Matsukawa, for all their notoriety as two of SHIELD’s best agents, are awkward in their movements and are obvious in being unused to living outside of certain protections. Tooru almost wants to smile.  He’s seen the two of them on missions before, and he knows firsthand how efficient they can be at escorting extradited high-level prisoners, intelligence reconnaissance, and other missions. And yet the moment their system of direction is lost, they seem almost…unable to function. Despite excelling in their fields, their experience is child’s play to him.

They spend the first night in a run-down motel just outside of Buffalo, New York, taking inventory of their meager supplies and deciding what the necessities are after carefully making sure the room isn’t bugged. They pay in cash, wearing disguises.

“We have—” Matsukawa thumbs through several more bills and jots down a number on a McDonald’s napkin, “—twelve hundred. Exactly.”

Hanamaki runs a hand over his face, sighing in exasperation. “God. That’s not much. Who knows how fucking long we’ll have to be out here? What if we have to split up?”

“Then we meet up somewhere else,” Tooru says simply, sitting on the hotel issued chair as he assembles and disassembles his Glock like it’s some sort of security blanket. He’s lost too many people to let these two die on his watch. “You two act like you’ve never had to hide from government authorities before.”

“Tooru, we’re used to working  _ with _ the government,” Hanamaki drawls, “Hiding isn’t exactly our strong suit.”

“Then you’re a shitty agent,” he replies quickly. Standing, he points the gun in Matsukawa’s direction, who merely raises a single eyebrow as he stares down the barrel, “ _ Think _ . If you’re so used to working alongside them, then you know how their protocols work, right? Use it against them.”

Hanamaki glances over at the scene, too tired to be worried if Tooru will actually pull the trigger, and runs a hand down his tired face. “You’re right. But that ambassador’s replacement is literally his right hand man. The plans are still on. How the fuck are we supposed to find him?”

“Actually,” Matsukawa says, flicking the gun out of his face, “he’ll be in Berlin for an arms deal in three days.”

“ _ What? _ ”

He shrugs. “Haven’t you seen the news recently? The official cover’s that it’s to meet with the prime minister, but those files Tooru stole? They were in code. A shit one too. Wasn’t even that hard to crack.”

“Well then,” Tooru says, “let’s go to Germany.”

 

 

 

**( INTERLUDE )**

“Are you excited?” Yahaba is a mix of wide-eyed innocence and grim determination, and Oikawa can’t figure out how his junior manages to retain naivety in the Red Room. He knows that Yahaba’s referring to Oikawa’s graduation, set to begin at midnight on the fourth floor. Five hours away.

Oikawa shrugs. “I don’t know.”

It’s the truth. He really doesn’t.

“I think…” Yahaba trails off, swallowing thickly, “I’m going to miss you. I don’t know how I’m going to survive training without you helping me at night, and with the  _ Soldat _ here, I’ll probably end up just like—”

The words catch in Yahaba’s throat, but Oikawa catches the meaning clearly enough. A glimpse of a boy with a shaven head with a bullet between his eyes flashes through his head. 

Oikawa pats Yahaba’s head. He feels a bit like an older brother to this kid, an odd sort of family-type love. Or at least, as much love as he can feel in the rigid lack of affection in the atmosphere.

“You’ll live,” he says, “You have to.”

 

 

Oikawa doesn’t remember much from the graduation ceremony except the white hot pain searing through his veins. It lingers, even as his consciousness slowly drips back into him, and time seems to have slowed down around him. Doing his best to sit up, his eyes widen at how little effort its taken. He lifts an arm, examining it thoroughly.

“What happened?” His voice is scratchy from screaming, his throat begging for rest. “What did you do to me?”

Irihata smiles. “You are a real Widow now,  _ chernyy pauk _ . Are you pleased?”

 

 

 

**( SCENE III )**

**here then, at long last, is my darkness. no cry of light, no glimmer, not even the faintest shard of hope to break free across the hold.**

Widow Poison’s multipurpose properties are somehow both brilliant and terrifying, all at the same time. With one drop, it confuses the central nervous system of the body enough to act as a truth serum. With three drops, it acts as a sedative and is capable of knocking out a fully grown man for seven hours. With five, it acts as a traceless murder weapon.

Tooru had given the diplomat, a heavy-set male with greasy hands, two drops of Widow’s poison along with the hit of heroin. It hadn’t taken as much as it usually needed, not when the needle went straight into the man’s veins. Tooru hadn’t felt anything but a rush of cool detachment, even as he watched the toxins suck the life out of the diplomat. (He can’t decide what’s better—feeling the repercussions of every sin he’s gathered on his hands, or the indifference that hardens him with every vice he’s comitted.)

He feels eyes on him, a hard unwavering stare that buries deep into him, freezing him where he stands.Tooru doesn’t like it.

Faster than lightning, he slips a knife into his hand and throws it right where he can feel the gaze. When he turns, Tooru’s blood freezes in his veins. There, in front of him—pinned to the wall by a knife through the edges of his suit, flesh and blood and careful eyes that examine every hair on Tooru’s head—is the Winter Soldier’s body with the expression of a man who’s found one thing and lost every other.

“ _ Serdtse _ ,” the Soldat says in a raspy voice. He speaks like a man who sees one thing and believes the other, but Tooru seems to have lost the ability to speak at all.

And so he does as he has always done. Tooru runs.

 

 

 

**( INTERLUDE )**

The perfected version of the Wolf Spiders is nowhere near perfect at all. His movements are jerky and odd at times, and stealth does not come easily to this muscled man with a scowl resting on his lips.  _ Well _ , Oikawa thinks,  _ it all depends on the definition of perfect. _ After all, in the Red Room, perfection meant pliable. Docile. Easy to control.

But the Soldat does not seem compliant at all. Oikawa can see the fight in his eyes, the lingering vestiges of humanity peeking out as the Soldat fires another round into a room of  people .

_ No, not people _ . Oikawa corrects himself mentally.  _ Enemies of the motherland. _

But they do not seem to be enemies at all. Just human beings. Wonderfully flawed human beings who make small mistakes and can laugh at them instead of cowering in fear, anticipating the harsh crack of a whip against scarred backs. Oikawa marvels at their innocence and genuine smiles. But in the Soldat’s eyes, there is no wonder. Only longing.

The first few missions they have together go simply enough: receive information, execute mission, return, debrief. On their fourth mission, however, a rush of courage overtakes Oikawa. He can’t tell what it is, but he blames it on the lights and sounds of Sendai. (The Japanese prefecture of Miyagi has always felt strangely warm to him—welcoming in a way he can’t quite explain, like he  _ belongs _ .)

“Who are you?” Oikawa asks over sake. Neither of them can get drunk, not with the Serum running through their veins and their metabolism burning through anything they touch, but it’s nice to pretend sometimes.

The Soldat is silent for a few seconds, and it almost makes Oikawa question whether or not he’d even heard. But then, in a quiet mutter, he says, “Don’t remember. Sometimes I can hear Iwa in my dreams though.”

“Iwa.” Oikawa tests it out on his tongue and decides he quite likes how it fits in the space of his mouth. Grinning with a sort of dark humor bred and born only in the Red Room, he says, “Iwa-chan, then. Just while we’re here.”

Iwa smiles, dry and hard with slivers of amusement leaking through the veneer of seriousness. “Okay.”

 

 

Later, Oikawa lies to himself and blames everything—wrinkled sheets and sore muscles and a snoring Iwa lying beside him on the queen-sized bed—on the sake and the glittering lights. He’s a spy, after all. Lying is all he knows.

 

 

 

**( SCENE IV )**

**the flower bloomed and faded. the sun rose and sank. the lover loved and went.**

“Get out of there.” Tooru’s voice is flat with gravity, his chest slamming with an odd mixture of feelings he can’t quite discern from each other. 

Hanamaki’s voice crackles to life through the earpiece. “ _ Huh? Why? What’s happening out there? Nothing looks wrong on the cameras. _ ”

“I’ll explain later, Takahiro,” he spits, winding through the crowds with mastery. He knows the use of Hanamaki’s first name will make things work faster, but Tooru doesn’t have enough self-control at the moment to sound nicer. “Abort mission.”

“ _ What the fuck? _ ” At that, Matsukawa sounds in. “ _ We have no idea where this bastard’s going to be next, and you’re willing to let him slide? _ ”

“Yes.”

In his mind’s eye, Tooru can see Hanamaki running a hand down his face. “ _ Alright. Leave it to us. Pick up’s at the west entrance. Don’t be late. _ ”

“I won’t.”

 

 

“You gonna tell us what the fuck that was about?” Hanamaki says, his knuckles white from how tight his grip on the steering wheel is.

They’re racing down the Autobahn at 80 miles an hour, windows rolled down and the wind running through their hair as the sun sets to their right. It’s reminiscent of an artistic photograph, but the tension in the air shatters the idyllic scene.

“Saw someone I knew.” Tooru can barely gather the strength to speak. The two are lucky they’re even getting answers.

Apparently neither of them see it that way.

“Really?” Matsukawa drawls dryly, his tone strangely caustic. “Was it the cashier from the grocery store?”

“No.”

“The mailman?”

“No.”

Matsukawa smiles humorlessly. “Then fucking tell us, Tooru.”

_ Heart. _ That’s what the Soldier had called him. A name Iwa had only dared whisper under the soft blanket of shadows on nights so dark even the moon refused to glow. Tooru refuses to believe that the Soldier who’d shown his face earlier was the same person who he’d loved.

He sighs and pulls out a bottle of vodka, chugging half the bottle before running the back of his hand over his mouth to wipe away the drip. Tooru has spent his entire life as a performer, an exaggerated liar dressed in glittering misdirections, but the curtains are coming to a close and the theater is falling apart around him. He tells them.

Everything.

 

 

 

**( INTERLUDE )**

At first, he stays. The scientists who had originally worked under the Wolf Spider program never think to wipe him after each mission. Oikawa supposes that they think they’ve done a good enough job that it isn’t necessary. But sometimes Iwa remembers and tells him about a woman’s voice in his dreams mumbling something about the horrors of the  _ Sobieto _ . Iwa thinks it might be someone from the Before, before life covered in bullet holes and blood. Oikawa smiles, kissing him on the forehead. He wonders if his own headspace would be better or worse if he could remember something other than the Red Room.

Their nights together are limited and far apart, and there’s always one constant in their relationship that mocks Oikawa every time they hold each other. Iwa always leaves. Oikawa always stays. Whether because of luck or worse, though, they work well together, and the higher ups of Department X never keep them apart for long. There’s always a danger to the Mother that must be eliminated—someone who knows too much, someone who doesn’t know enough.

But Riyadh happens, and it happens all too soon for Oikawa’s liking.

The person they return to Oikawa is no longer Iwa. They give him an empty shell of a man, eyes empty and dark. Iwa had been a resounding sequence of impossibilities—gentle touches on calloused hands, warm smiles in the middle of a blizzard—but the man standing in front of Oikawa is one thing and one thing only. A soldier.

As they leave the headquarters, Iwa’s handler walks over to Oikawa and gives him a small but cruel smile. “Weapons must not feel. I’m sure Irihata would agree,  _ da _ ?”

When their contact is established in Saudi Arabia, Oikawa buys himself a separate hotel room across from Iwa’s. (He pays in cash and pulls a hood over his hair.)

For the first time, he lays down and cries.

 

 

The nights had been theirs and theirs alone. Soft glances underneath moonlight. A kiss under the sheets. The darkness had been comforting, a reprieve from the glares of the sun. It had been a blanket to hold the two of them, locking them and keeping the small universe they’d built together safe. But now, it chokes him, binding Oikawa with chains of shadow and bone.

They don’t expect him back at the Red Room, not after he’d graduated three years before. No Widow ever returns.

_ If they take the nights away from me, it’s only fair that I take something in return. _

Yahaba, wide-eyed and shocked, is the first to fall. Oikawa remembers a few years prior, the boy telling him that he’d miss Oikawa, but Oikawa doesn’t miss when he pulls the trigger. He falls like the walls of Jericho, a leak in a seal, Oikawa pushing through to infiltrate. There is no remorse in his veins as he steps over the body.  _ They’ll all be dead by dawn anyway _ , he thinks.

With every step he takes, blood follows. Feelings are extraneous and unnecessary, after all  _ and wouldn’t Irihata agree, da? _ The handler’s words ring in his head as Oikawa shoots another Widow, over and over like a mantra that poisons him with every repetition.

He makes his way to the office where he knows Irihata will be.

“You’ve returned,” he says, “No widow has done that before.”

Oikawa says nothing as he pulls out a gun.

“You are full of so many surprises,  _ rooskaya _ . You may try to run, but you will always be a Wido—” 

Irihata is dead before he hits the ground.

 

 

The Red Room had been beautiful. Oikawa, staring at the ashy remains of what had once been, much prefers it in its current state.

 

 

 

**( STOP )**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [reblog this fic?](http://hyoudo.tumblr.com/post/167275112131/waves-after-midnight-23)
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> [ a ] the part in the scene iv interlude about a woman talking about the sobieto (the japanese word for soviet, according to google translate) is bc of the fact that during the 1960s in post occupation japan the relations between japan and the soviet union were very tense so it’s actually iwaizumi’s mother speaking against the russians. i’d like to think that in this au, iwaizumi is in shikotan (a russian occupied japanese island) on vacation with his parents when he is kidnapped. 
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> [ b ] uhh in case it’s (?) a little confusing, there are some time skips in the scene iii and iv interludes and basically iwaizumi and oikawa have a little under a year together before the handlers in department x find out about oikawa and iwaizumi’s relationship and decide to start wiping iwaizumi. it’s in the scene iii interlude where oikawa really starts questioning the red room. (this is where i took “comic canon” and shoved it in a blender to die bc fuck canon we don’t need her anyway) essentially, as a form of revenge, oikawa goes back to the red room and burns it down and kills irihata
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>  **quote sources **  
> ****  
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> act ii, scene i: seamus heaney, "the forge"  
>  act ii, scene ii: emily dickinson, "i took my power in my hand"  
> act ii, scene iii: mark danielewski, _house of leaves_  
>  act ii, scene iv: virginia woolf, _orlando_


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